Love and Schadenfreude
by Yamitron
Summary: "The line between love and hate is so thin, I truly don't know if I love or hate you. And that frightens me. I loved you once. Do I love you still?" Yami Marik talks about his dead hikari. Very slight bronzeshipping.


The very first thing I can remember is gritty limestone beneath my bare feet. You'd think it would be sights or sounds, or even smells, but no. I had been a concept before then. An idea. Not really real, so I don't count it. I couldn't think for myself. I lived only when he added more to the idea of me. I floated in and out of existence. The only way I can think to describe it is hypotheticals. Picture a paper bag blowing in the wind. But it is intangible. When it reaches a building, it drifts through the walls, no longer real. Then when you think of it, it floats back out, listless. The idea is near impossible to understand to someone who hasn't been through it, and almost no one has. It's an interesting thing, being imaginary. Like the eye floaters that quickly fly away before your pupil can land on them, just on the periphery of what you can see…

But once I became myself, truly, though just a shadow of him in the beginning, the first thing I remember noticing, is that gritty, cold limestone under my feet. I had seen images through his eyes. Heard his voice. But when you don't exist, you don't exactly forget the first time you can touch, the first time your fingers feel attached to you. I can't put it any more clearly than that. First I wasn't. And then I was. And I remember it all. I haven't touched limestone since we left the caves, but I think I will always have a certain fondness for it. The very first thing my consciousness felt.

After I opened my violet eyes to see differently from what he did, I was slightly taken aback. I had an almost cosmic moment. He and I are one. But we are not. I am here. But I am really there. What's to stop me disintegrating into the room? What's to stop me from melting away? Do I really exist? Profound thoughts for a newborn ten year old. But really, they all happened in a millisecond, and were not quite so clear. Then they melted away, and I haven't thought them since. Because my eyes fell upon the crying boy, my light, and an urge stirred inside of me so strongly, I knew right there it was my purpose. All thought was extinguished, leaving only one.

"He needs me."

My shadow-like arms wrapped around him tightly, holding him while he cried the tears of incredible pain. Since he and I were one, we neither touched nor felt nothing. This is hard to describe. Each of us feels what the other does. I felt the pain wracking his newly scarred back, the drops of blood seeping into the bandage, the hatred inside of him. And I loved it. He felt my joy at being free, my lust for that hatred, and my thirst for blood on my hands. But this happened physically, too. When I touched him, he felt my touch, and I felt a hand on me, where mine was on his. As we were one, our nerve endings worked the same. As I held him, he and I both had the sensation of holding someone in our arms, and being held. After a few minutes, his tears stopped.

His bloodshot eyes looked up into mine own, questioning but tentatively hopeful. "…. Marik?"

As the name hit my ears, I knew it was my own. Malik. Marik. "Yeah." I smirked. Even then, I did not smile. Only smirked. "I'm here." The voice coming from my throat was similar to his, but deeper, and I can still here the tone difference. Our voices were like the audible equivalent of optimism and pessimism.

He buried his face into my chest, and we both sighed at the physical feelings we shared from it. My voice continued speaking, saying what I somehow knew to be true. How I knew, I don't know. "I'll take the pain away, my light. You have nothing to fear." I felt the relief washing through him as our bodies melted together in that moment.

And as they solidified, I was alone. I was bent on my hands and knees, where Malik had been when I first appeared, but he was gone. With a look of disinterest, I pushed myself to stand, and finally got a good look at the room Malik lived in. I had seen it through his eyes, but not my own. It was almost like seeing without glasses if you need them, or trying to peer in tinted windows. With clarity, I looked around. The fire of rage inside me flared at the place. Rock. Scrolls. Candle stubs and ink pots. A mattress that made the stalactites look comfortable. I instantly despised all of it.

With a restrained hand, I glossed my fingers over the papyrus strewn about, one of which dictated the Tomb Keeper's Duty, and held a detailed drawing of the hieroglyphics now carved into our back. I grit my teeth, those fingers finding my face and touching the new scars beneath my eyes. Hissing, I drew them back; it still hurt. All of me hurt. But with this new freedom, I didn't care. Pain was the first real sensation I had.

Sitting on the slab of a bed, I explored the mind I had access to. Malik was now unconscious. Sleeping gently in the recesses of our mind, recovering. Good, I had thought, he needs his rest. It's a very odd thing, feeling a presence in your mind. But I knew nothing else.

I found his memories – our memories – and probed through them. Laughing and being reprimanded. Distant, veiled affection from our sister. Servant-brother hybrid relationship with Odion. And his father. I won't even say 'our'. His father was always his, never mine. Every image of him was tinted with fear, as though even the memories could hurt.

It wasn't long after I came to be that Malik and I explored each other. We took turns being in control and being the shadowy apparition only the other could see. I liked him. But then, I was made to like him. We laughed and played games we made up, we talked about nothing at all, and at night I had the lead, and his shadowy self curled up in my arms, nestled into my chest. We were only ten; physical contact was the most comforting thing we could draw from each other.

I loved those nights. Like a built-in reward system I had, I got a sense of pleasant warmth from protecting the boy. His dirty blonde hair splayed on our grey nightshirt, tired violet eyes gently slid shut, torso lightly rising and falling with breath, and a smile playing on his lips. He was safe. I remember kissing the non-existent head and tightening my hold around the intangible body, then letting myself daydream about the slaughter of his father as I drifted to sleep.

My maturity has always been all over the place. Sometimes I act my age, sometimes the age I was designed to be, sometimes older. Back then was no exception.

He loved my spikes. Sometimes he would ask me to sit in front of him just so he could play with them. It relaxes me still to this day. I let my eyes close as he gently twirled the spikes around his fingers, pulled them, ran his fingers through them. This occasion, I was wearing only shorts, so I assume his eyes dropped to the now-healed scars sometime during. Hands following eyes, he began to trace the black markings.

I felt it before I heard it. The despair grew first, then hopelessness followed, and I turned around just in time for the tears to form in his eyes. Mine met his, and with a sigh, I pulled him into my shadowy arms. "Malik…" I murmured into his hair, his face burrowing into my shoulder. "We'll get out of here."

It was obvious the scars and what they meant caused his distress. We were to stay in the tombs all our lives. But neither of us wanted this. All we really wanted was to be out in the world, doing whatever it was people do. He wanted a motorcycle. I wanted—well. I didn't really know what I wanted yet.

He shook his head into my shoulder, the tears feeling wet against my skin. "I'm going to die here…" He mumbled, hiccupping. "No matter what I do. Father would find me… He would whip me, torture me, and drag me back into the black…"

The hatred in my heart blossomed to full capacity, and I knew right then to free Malik, I had to kill his father.

"…." I never was good at comfort. I did the only thing I knew of to comfort him. I held him in my arms and stroked his hair, letting him cry on my shoulder. Eventually they slowed and ceased, and, sniffling, he met my eyes again. I chastely pressed my lips to his, and then to his forehead, saying: "I'll be here to protect you." It was both of our first kiss, but I thought nothing of it. It was just a way to show affection.

I let him sleep.

And that night, I murdered.

When Malik found out, he was devastated. Mentally, he forced me into a secret place, hidden from the world. In there, I could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing. All I knew were bars. At first I was furious—I tried to help him and he does _this_?—but eventually I quieted, festered. I still have nightmares about this portion of my life. Flames. Bars. Helplessness. I couldn't move. I had no body again. I was just a thought.

Being restrained is one thing. Tied up, handcuffed, chained: they are all restraining. But being ripped from a physical body is something else entirely. It's like the ground between dead and alive. I was powerless. I could do nothing on my own. If I thought really, really hard, the most I could do was give him a headache. I had a fleeting glimpse of reality, and then it was stolen from me. After awhile, I forgot what I even looked like. Oh, I knew I had scars, spiky hair, tan skin. But my facial features, height, even eye colour were lost to me. There's nothing quite like it.

When he finally let me out, it's no wonder I was such a terror. Not only was I meant to be pure hatred, but also I had been locked away for seven long years. Thrust into the mind of a seventeen year old with a seven year old's social prowess, I was doomed. There really was no hope of my ever being anything but a murderous psychopath.

My grudge against him was strong. Very strong. He stole my freedom after I gave him his. He refused to let me see, hear, breathe. I wanted to destroy him, the Pharaoh who put us in the tombs to begin with, and then anything and everything that moves.

But he beat me. Threw me into the Shadow Realm, left me to die. Had it not been for Bakura, I would be there now. Dying, if not dead.

Time passed. Once I gained my own body and he, his, our grudge was slowly forgotten. His remorse for the goings on after the tombs was overwhelming, and my happiness at freedom consumed me. Our thoughts and feelings were still connected, but more dully.

Finally, when we reconciled after a year, things were tense. I was never his friend. We were amiable associates. Friendly acquaintances. Agreeable tenants. But never friends.

And today, while I stare into those big lavender eyes obscured with black hair, blood streaming from them rather than tears, I feel so much regret.

Those few moments will haunt me forever, I think. I doubt I'll ever be able to shake them, ever have permanent peace from them. I hide the nightmares. I hide waking up in the middle of the night with a gasp, by rolling over and burying my face into a pillow, my pained expression fought back until a few hours pass and I can drift away again. This is probably my punishment. Though well deserved, it's like letting a wound heal over just enough and then ripping it open again while it's still angry and red.

My hand reaches forward, trembling, afraid to see what I already sense to be true…

I lived my life in black and white for a while after the fact. Numb. Food was tasteless, flowers odorless, sound echoed in empty ears, things lost their colour, touch felt distant. For the first few days I fought the urge to finish what the dark god started and end myself, as the universe seems to want me dead. I only knew passion for a week or two. Passionate anger, the visceral darkness inside of me wanting to hold him who I hated accountable, wanting to rip him limb from limb. Passionate sadness, screaming, wanting tears to come but finding they just never could. Passionate love and lust, drowning myself in something that was real, something to cling to.

Former golden locks now wilted and black, were it not for the strong connection between us, I may not have recognized him.

A connection he tried to sever. I don't know what he did, but he cut himself off from me. Those shared feelings between us had grown muted over the years of having our own respected bodies. Muted, but present. If I reached out, I could feel his thoughts and I could tell where he was. But he just cut it. Sliced through our bond. Cut me out of his life, mind, and soul in his desperation to not be found. But I found him anyway. Only a little too late.

Bronze skin paling, he was ice cold to the touch, clammy from being in raging waters for who knows how long. My heart, already low, sunk into my stomach. I was too late.

He had run off some time ago. Convinced I would hate him for something he did without sound mind, he refused to let me near him. I still don't know where he went during those few months of being on his own. And I'm ashamed of my lack of action to find him. I didn't start seriously searching for a month after the first week. And finally, I saw his crumpled body on the riverbank, not far from the Domino Bridge.

Oh, Malik. My Malik. I was a horrible Yami to you, in the end. When you needed me most, I pushed you away. I snapped at you for the effect on my mind the drugs and alcohol you started to take. I wish I had been there sooner to save you from that jump.

I'm to blame. I treated you horribly. I didn't give you the love and support you needed, the physical touch you craved. I denied you. Forced you into the arms of someone who only abused you.

And what scares me the most: I wouldn't change what I did.

I loved you once. I loved you with the love of brother and soul mate. Two halves of a whole. Then you betrayed me, stabbed me in the heart, locked me away in the darkness and forbade me from seeing the light; I couldn't help but hate you. Now I can't stop from wondering, is it for you that I mourned? Or is it the ungrieved loss of our separation? Like a man who forgot to cry when his arm was amputated. Am I mourning for you now, or for my budding hatred of you? The line between love and hate is so thin, I truly don't know if I love or hate you. And that frightens me. I loved you once. Do I love you still?


End file.
